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I have regretted using the GPL, twice. First time I made a project I wrote myself (a CP solver called Minion) GPL. I now know several companies had interest in

I have regretted using the GPL, twice. First time I made a project I wrote myself (a CP solver called Minion) GPL. I now know several companies had interest in it but we're afraid to put any GPL in their toolchain. I've never received useful external contributions, so I may as well have used BSD. The second is a project I work on where GPL V2 was chosen. Now some committers have passed away so we are stuck on 2, so can't link with other, GPL v3-only code

nfriedly 9y ago
I've had a couple of cases where companies pay me $5-10k for an commercial license of something I released free under GPL or AGPL - its rare, but it does happen. You can add a note along the lines of "commercial license available, contact me for details" in the readme. I do require that contributors assign copyright to me before I'll merge their PRs.
- dopeboy 9y ago
  What kind of software did you write that generated interest in a commercial license?
  - nfriedly 9y ago
    This guy: https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker It's a web proxy that can be used as a lib to tweak web pages on the way through.
mcguire 9y ago
You didn't use the "GPLv2 or later" clause?
- pm215 9y ago
  The Linux kernel is the most well known codebase that is specifically GPL-2-only. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other 2-only codebases made by people familiar with kernel development, either because they were influenced by the kernel's choice or because they wanted to be able to use code from the kernel. QEMU is in the latter boat -- we have code that was copied from the kernel, so effectively we're GPL-2-only despite having a fair amount of 2-or-later or BSD or other licensed source too. This is awkward because we'd really like to be able to use the binutils disassemblers, but we're stuck on the versions from the last GPL-2 binutils release...
- CJefferson 9y ago
  Some people are very opposed to it on principle, because it puts control of your software in the future entirely in the control of whoever manages to take over the FSF.
abetusk 9y ago
For Minion, this was a product of research from a University, right? Did you receive any grants to produce this software or receive any grants based on the software that you wrote?
- CJefferson 9y ago
  No funding specifically for minion, it is often used in my group's research, as a test bed for new ideas and algorithms.

nfriedly 9y ago

I've had a couple of cases where companies pay me $5-10k for an commercial license of something I released free under GPL or AGPL - its rare, but it does happen. You can add a note along the lines of "commercial license available, contact me for details" in the readme. I do require that contributors assign copyright to me before I'll merge their PRs.

dopeboy 9y ago
What kind of software did you write that generated interest in a commercial license?
- nfriedly 9y ago
  This guy: https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker It's a web proxy that can be used as a lib to tweak web pages on the way through.

mcguire 9y ago

You didn't use the "GPLv2 or later" clause?

pm215 9y ago
The Linux kernel is the most well known codebase that is specifically GPL-2-only. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other 2-only codebases made by people familiar with kernel development, either because they were influenced by the kernel's choice or because they wanted to be able to use code from the kernel. QEMU is in the latter boat -- we have code that was copied from the kernel, so effectively we're GPL-2-only despite having a fair amount of 2-or-later or BSD or other licensed source too. This is awkward because we'd really like to be able to use the binutils disassemblers, but we're stuck on the versions from the last GPL-2 binutils release...
CJefferson 9y ago
Some people are very opposed to it on principle, because it puts control of your software in the future entirely in the control of whoever manages to take over the FSF.

abetusk 9y ago

For Minion, this was a product of research from a University, right? Did you receive any grants to produce this software or receive any grants based on the software that you wrote?

CJefferson 9y ago
No funding specifically for minion, it is often used in my group's research, as a test bed for new ideas and algorithms.